Hopkinton residents report seeing black bear

A black bear that has been roaming the state for the past week was seen Tuesday morning in Hopkinton, not far from the Connecticut border, the state Department of Environmental Management confirmed.Neighbors...

Comment

By
Maria Armental
Posted Jul. 3, 2013 @ 12:01 am

A black bear that has been roaming the state for the past week was seen Tuesday morning in Hopkinton, not far from the Connecticut border, the state Department of Environmental Management confirmed.

Neighbors reported seeing the bruin, estimated to weigh up to 300 pounds and not fully grown, on Reynolds Court, a dead-end street in Hopkinton near Route 95, not far from where farmer Reynolds’ Holsteins once entered the highway.

That report came in at 5:37 a.m., said Gail Mastrati, a spokeswoman for the DEM.

Up early out of habit, Lisa Reynolds let her Chihuahua Honey out to let Jasper the cat in. But Honey, who likes to bark at Jasper, kept barking. So Reynolds went to check, and there, about 15 feet from her back door, was the bear.

“Big and black,” Reynolds said, laughing.

Honey, black and white and about 41/2 pounds, continued barking. “She was giving him heck,” Reynolds said.

“The bear took one look at me and waddled off through my garden” toward the neighbor’s garden. Reynolds called the neighbor, but the bear carried on toward Route 3.

No damage was reported on her garden, Reynolds said, noting she has a deer fence around it.

At 7:23 a.m., neighbors spotted him on North Road, about 2 miles away and about a mile from the Connecticut border.

Officials believe it’s the same bear that was earlier seen in northern Rhode Island, with confirmed sightings in Burrillville, Foster, Glocester, Scituate, Smithfield, and North Smithfield.

As of Monday, DEM officials had established the bear’s range as far south as Exeter and West Greenwich, where it was last seen just before 9 a.m. crossing Route 102.

By 6:50 Monday evening, Mastrati said, the bear was seen roaming across yards on Austin Farm Road in Exeter.

At 7:29 p.m., the DEM received an unconfirmed report of something, maybe the bear, moving in the area of exit 3B off Route 95 in Richmond.